2023-08-03: Windsor Castle & Mamma Mia!

We had a bit of a rough night. Amanda and the kids had a hard time falling/staying asleep. Not a lot of sleep was had for most of us unfortunately. Jet lag is great… Darrell was mean and woke up the family at 7:30 to get the day started. It was our first full day in London.

After getting showered and dressed we headed to the hotel restaurant for some breakfast. It was a fairly standard hotel breakfast buffet containing both hot and cold items. We tried to convince Michael to try the black pudding but he wasn’t feeling brave this morning. We returned to the room to grab our gear for the day and left the hotel.

We started our journey towards Windsor Castle. We walked about 10 minutes to the Tottenham Court Road train station. Darrell had pre-purchased train tickets online that we had to pick up at the train station. The site did not state that you could only pick them up at certain train stations and Tottenham Court Road wasn’t one of them. With only 10 minutes until the train was scheduled to arrive, we didn’t have time to go to another station to pick up the tickets. Of course, you can buy tickets at this station. You just can’t pick pre-purchased ones up for whatever reason. So, a couple of minutes and $120 later we have another set of tickets for the train. Very frustrating.

The rest of the transit to Windsor went smoothly. We got on the train and, after a quick transfer in Slough, we arrived at the Windsor & Eton Central station. As you step off the train you get your first view of Windsor Castle. After a short walk from the station, we were at the entrance of the Castle. There was a large line of people waiting to get in, but we quickly figured out that was for groups waiting to enter the castle. We found the non-group entrance and walked right in. It was about 10:30 when we entered the castle.

We followed the signs to grab our audioguide and made our way to one of the courtyards. We timed our entry to align with the changing of the guard so found a good viewpoint in the courtyard and waited for the ceremony to begin. The old guard marched in at 10:45 and the new guard marched in with a marching band at 11:00am. We watched the ceremony which took about 30 minutes and then started to explore the castle.

The castle has been around since the 1200s. We started at St. George’s Chapel which was right beside the courtyard. It was an impressive chapel. Very ornate woodwork and stonework everywhere. Unfortunately they don’t allow any pictures of castle interiors so we don’t have any pictures of inside the chapel. The remains of several of the Kings and Queens are contained within the chapel including Queen Elizabeth II.

After exiting the chapel, we made our way to the state apartments. The first room we enetered contained Queen Mary’s Doll’s House. It is a huge doll house built for Queen Mary between 1921 and 1924. It is 1/12th scale and contains all sorts of accessories such as furniture, dishes, books, jewellery, and paintings. Everything is real. The drawers in the furniture work. The books have writing in them. The bottles of wine have wine in them. It’s very impressive.

After viewing the Doll’s House, we stopped for a quick snack in the cafe before we continued our tour through the various state apartments. The are filled with ornate furniture, paintings, tapestries, old weapons and armor, and other items from around the world. The oppulence and wealth of the items we saw is overwhelming. There was a hall filled with the coat of arms/shields of over 1000 noble families. There was also a room to showcase some of the china collections within the castle. There was a fire in this section of the castle in 1992. Restoration took until 1997. Patrick was interested in what started the fire so he asked the staff member nearby. He told us quite the story. Apparently they were doing some restoration/renovations to that section in 1992. There are spotlights in the chapel that are usually only on for an hour or two during events in the chapel to illuminate some curtaions. Due to the work being done in the area, the spotlights were turned on and left on. The curtains overheated and caught fire. They burned quickly and reached to the roof of the chapel where the fire entered the attic. The attic had no fire barriers so the fire quickly spread from there. They changed the location of the chapel and other layout changes to that area during the restoration work.

After touring through the apartments, we stopped at the gift shop and then made our way to the castle’s exit. We spent about 3.5 hours in the castle. We walked back to the train station and made our way back to our hotel in London. There was a fire truck parked outside the entrance to the hotel. We thought they were visiting the bar next door or something. We entered the hotel and there were the firemen. Apparently an alarm had gone off while we were gone that they were investigating. Of course, that meant the elevators were out of commission. So, up the stairs we went to our room. Luckily our room was only on the 4th floor. We relaxed in the room for an hour so while Amanda had a nap before getting ourselves ready to head out for the evening. We had tickets to see Mamma Mia!

We started heading in the direction of the theatre with the intent of finding something to eat along the way. There was a burger place Michael wanted to try in the vicinity. We headed there first but it was a tiny place and they had no empty tables. We continued looking and quickly discovered that eating in the theatre district without a reservation was going to be a problem. After walking around for about 30 minutes, we gave up on finding somewhere decent to eat and ended up at a Five Guys. While the burgers were decent, the atmosphere wasn’t what we were looking for. Once we were finished our meal we continued on our way to the theatre.

We arrived at the theatre and found our seats. It was a small theatre and the seats were a little tight. The interior of the theatre was very ornate. The show started at 7:30. It had a short intermission and it ended at about 10:00pm. This was the first live musical for the kids. I don’t think they quite knew what to expect. They enjoyed it but not as much as we had hoped. The adults thought it was a great show. The acting was great and the music in Mamma Mia is always enjoyable. They ask you not to sing along during the show, but they did perform three songs at the end of the show that they encouraged you to sing along with. It was a lot of fun!

Once the show was over, we returned to the hotel and called it a night.